mourn with the moon
by cinnab3an
Summary: Chiron's words leave Achilles to wonder what it will be like for Patroclus after he is gone. Then Patroclus goes missing, and he becomes the one left behind.


"Perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left behind when another is gone."

Achilles tries to imagine it that night, after Chiron has retired and Patroclus is washing his face in preparation for sleep. He imagines, first, himself fighting some magnificent battle, adorned in golden armor and caressed with blood and gore from the enemies he strikes down. He sees himself fall with the army behind him coursing on to avenge him-chanting, wailing, _Achilles, Achilles, Achilles_ as they march to victory. He sees them collect the body and carry it back to camp, where Patroclus falls on it with a cry and cannot bear to let go for days. Patroclus, who is sun-kissed and lovelier than Achilles has ever seen him before, who darkens and fades. The starshine in his eyes falls away as the nights go by, dulled by grief. He does not leave the body to eat, or to sleep. He carries it into a tent that must be their own, onto a cot that they must share like they do at Pelion, and lays beside him. A girl with dark skin and dark hair comes often to comfort him- and Achilles does not know how to feel about that, how his mind creates a woman to stay by Patroclus' side when he himself is not, though he feels terribly glad that Patroclus usually ignores her in favor of cradling the body. He watches as days pass, and then weeks, and the gladness of Patroclus ignoring the woman for him falls away to fear as she cannot get him to feed or to drink. As Patroclus wastes away on the cot next to Achilles, until the dark woman inevitably comes to find them both gone.

He opens his eyes and fixes them on Patroclus, alive and strong as he cups water onto his cheeks with his soft concentration. _I will not leave him behind_ , Achilles swears. _I will never let grief destroy him. I will not leave him_.

Patroclus wipes his face with a scrap of cloth and removes his tunic before climbing into the bed of furs beside Achilles. Their eyes meet and, as if guessing the nature of Achilles' thoughts, Patroclus presses in close and smiles gently, kindly. Achilles closes his eyes and holds his beloved friend close, chasing away the last wisps of images of Patroclus, mourning to his death.

He does not think to imagine that it could ever be the other way around.

xxx

Mt. Pelion was not for mortals, Chiron had said. It was a place for heroes, god-born and with destinies and prophecies at their footsteps guiding them safely through the forest. With Achilles by his side, and with enough training, Patroclus would be in less peril there, but he was still nothing more than human and he could succumb to hurts that had no impact on Achilles or Chiron.

One day, Patroclus misses the midday meal. He does not appear at the clearing Achilles goes to, to practice sparring, nor at the particular stretch of river where they play when they have free time. He is still gone when Apollo's chariot is low in the sky, and Achilles cannot bear to go back to their cave and sleep alone, knowing that somewhere out there Patroclus needs him.

It's a little difficult to track in the dark a trail that is so old. Even with his godly senses, Achilles has to bend close to find footprints.

He fears coming across another set of tracks almost as much as he anticipates it—if his Patroclus is missing because he was kidnapped, then Achilles will be able to take all of the worry he's felt all day out on his kidnapper. He pictures this: coming across Patroclus bound and helpless against a pair of bandits. Both bandits have weapons and Achilles does not, but he has never needed a weapon before to best his opponents and the prize waiting for him here is enough encouragement to do so. With the bandits disposed of, Achilles will run to Patroclus' side, and he will free him from his bonds and hold him close.

 _I have saved you_ _,_ he will say.

 _You have_ , Patroclus will agree. _My hero_. And he will lean forward and give Achilles a reward he has been dreaming of claiming since before he was sent to Mt. Pelion.

It is because Achilles is immersed in his fantasy that he does not notice the deep rut in the mud that leads to a deep crevice in the ground. His bare feet slip into the mud and he has to catch himself on the outstretched limb of a tree so that he does not slide down into the ravine below. When he steadies himself and searches for the trail again, he finds a tiny strip of familiar cloth—fabric from Patroclus' tunic—tangled in the undergrowth around where he himself was caught unaware.

Achilles grips again the branch that stopped his fall and leans carefully over the ravine. It is too dark, and the crevice too deep, for him to see the bottom, but he must be absolutely sure before he moves on.

"Patroclus?" he whispers into the gloom. A beat of silence passes, then another, and another. And finally, purest of all sounds, "Achilles?" from down below. Patroclus' voice is thin and hoarse. He must have been calling for help for hours, Achilles realizes. But he'd heard nothing on the journey here, he's sure of it. And all day long, nothing.

"Are you alright? Can you find your way out?"

Shuffling down below is followed by a muffled groan, and Achilles feels his heartbeat catch in his chest. He's heard many times before the sounds men make when they are in pain and trying to hide it. He's not yet heard it from Patroclus before.

"I do not believe I can move very far," Patroclus says. "I skinned my knee when I fell, and my—my arm," he pauses, "it is injured as well."

So he cannot climb out himself. Achilles may still rescue him yet. "How spacious is it, the area where you are? Is there room for another?" He searches in the dark around him and then, from the tree that broke his fall, he finds a length of thick vines wrapped around the trunk. They seem solid enough to hold his weight, and Patroclus'.

"If I stood, there would be room," Patroclus calls, "but I'm not sure I can."

Achilles unwinds one of the vines from the trunk and secures it carefully around his waist. He throws another one into the ravine. "Use this to help you stand." He waits impatiently as Patroclus takes hold of the vine, frowning every time he gasps in pain.

"I am standing," Patroclus says at last.

"I am coming down," Achilles warns him. Keeping one hand on the vine around his waist and one on the shrubbery around him, Achilles makes his way down the steep slope toward where Patroclus waits. By the time he reaches his friend, night has fallen completely. Only the stars and his mother's gifts allow him to see Patroclus, and only barely so. He is covered in mud from the top of his dark hair down to his bare feet, and shivering furiously. When Achilles lays a hand on his shoulder, desperate for contact, his lips split apart in a dopey smile.

"I knew you would find me," Patroclus murmurs. The moon reflects in his large eyes and then twinkles away when they slide closed. A moment later, he collapses, but Achilles reaches out and catches him before he can reach the ground. Worried, he feels for a pulse, but Patroclus is merely unconscious. With all the gentleness of a mother tending to her newborn babe, he lifts Patroclus onto his back and adjusts the vine so that it wraps around both of them. Patroclus' legs dangle limply around Achilles' waist and his arms hang like dead weight from over his shoulders; he is as still as if death has claimed him—it is terrifying.

Achilles draws a hand behind him to further secure Patroclus to his back and, with the other holding tight to the vines, begins to climb out of the ravine. He makes sure not to make too many jarring movements, hyper-aware of every whine of pain from Patroclus. The climb is slow and tedious: the slick mud prevents him from getting a firm foothold, the shrubs and sticks catch at his feet and threaten to trip him, the vines periodically loosen and Achilles has to reach back and tighten them for fear of losing his precious burden again. As soon as they make it back to even ground, he unwinds the vines and shifts Patroclus so that he is more balanced. Both hands move to cup the back of Patroclus' thighs, supporting him and allowing Achilles more of the skin to skin contact that he has been unjustly deprived of for an entire day. Within a few minutes of walking, Patroclus' shivering subsides, and he relaxes into Achilles' hold.

The trek back to the caves seems to last forever, but Achilles knows that that is only a favorite trick of Chronos: to warp time to seem longer when Achilles is desperate for it to be shorter. With the mud obscuring Patroclus from view, he cannot see the extent of his injuries. Left alone in a cold, muddy ravine for hours while bleeding, he can only imagine how bad they are, and, though Patroclus has already told him that they were nothing more than a skinned knee and a damaged arm, he pictures fatal wounds in their place and feels sick.

 _Chiron can fix him_ , Achilles tells himself, over and over when he needs the assurance. _I must get him back to Chiron and everything will be alright. He will be alright_. He refuses to consider any other outcome than full recovery.

The centaur is standing outside the mouth to their cave when Achilles finally arrives. His dark eyes take in the injured boy bound to Achilles' back and seem to harden and soften at once.

"You have found him," he says in lieu of a greeting.

"He was—he had fallen down a ravine, and was wounded so that he could not get out himself."

Chiron nods and doesn't try to take Patroclus from him—for this, Achilles is grateful, because he is not yet recovered from the terror of losing him yet, nor the terrible inumbness/i that had filled him upon finding Patroclus injured and alone. He does not want to let go yet but he knows that he must if a proper examination of Patroclus' hurts is to take place(and he could never stand in the way of such an important procedure, _never_ ) so he follows Chiron into the cave and tenderly settles Patroclus on the ground next to their shared bed.

Chiron takes the bowl and cloth they use to clean their faces before bed and folds himself gracefully into a crouch beside Patroclus. He dampens the cloth and then begins to wipe away the mud from Patroclus's face. Slowly, the grime is cleared from his skin, revealing scrapes and scratches. Chiron pushes the tunic up high on his thighs to clean them next, and Achilles flushes and turns away from the sight of all that soft, smooth skin, bared for him to see without its owner's knowledge. A low clicking sound brings his attention back to Chiron, who is focused on one of the boy's knobby knees. The knee is raw and bloody and looks fairly bruised around the edges of torn skin. The centaur's certain fingers expertly smooth out the wound, picking out bits of gravel and plant matter.

"If he keeps this clean," Chiron rumbles, "a bandage will not be necessary."

"I will be sure to let him know," Achilles promises fiercely. He pictures this: Patroclus dirtying the wound on his knee because he did not know to keep it clean; his knee rotting; the long length of his leg decaying like a corpse and in need of—what had Chiron called it? Amputation?—being removed. He grips the edge of his tunic, dirtied and torn by his nighttime trek, swears to himself that he won't let Patroclus lose his leg.

Lost in his thoughts—again—he is startled back to reality by a sharp moan. Chiron has taken the cloth and begun to clear the drying mud from Patroclus' arms, and he has one of them held firmly but gently in his hands. The arm is bent at the elbow, bent at the wrong direction, and swollen as if Patroclus harbors a fig inside. The dark skin is darkened further by ugly purple and yellow bruises.

"What-what is this?" Achilles cries. The injury that Patroclus had not seemed to be able to tell him— _my arm_ , he had said, _it is injured as well_ —this must be it. Forget the bloody knee, _this_ will be the wound that ends Patroclus, surely, the one that takes a limb and is not satisfied with such a prize, takes his happiness and his energy and his life with it as well.

"A simple fracture," Chiron says, soothingly, as if he can read the panic behind Achilles' eyes. "We can give him a sling for it, and it will heal in a matter of weeks. No lasting damage."

"He will not lose his arm?"

"He will not."

Achilles nods, sated. He watches and waits patiently as Chiron clears the rest of the mud from his friend's body, turning away only when the centaur removes his filthy tunic and covers him with a clean one. While Chiron carries the bowl of dirty water outside to empty it, Achilles crouches down and scoops Patroclus back into his arms, lays him down in their bed. He settles several furs on top of him, recalling the chill that Patroclus had had when Achilles had found him, before changing into a clean tunic himself and climbing in beside his friend.

Patroclus exhales with a tiny whistle when he is most exhausted. Laying as close to him as he can get without rustling the wounded arm or knee, Achilles smiles at the familiar sound, grateful that he hasn't lost it because of the day's actions. He does not notice when Chiron returns with fresh water in the bowl, nor when he leaves. His mind is fully on the boy by his side who is far too mortal for his liking. "Bad things happen to you when I am not by your side," he whispers, near silent, "so never leave me. I will never leave you." He closes his eyes and lets his mind fill with images of the two of them, older, together, and unharmed. "I will not let anything else hurt you."


End file.
